Misfits — which we long ago renamed Teenage Mutant British Hooligans — was a UK series about, well, teenage mutant British hooligans. A group of delinquent youths (Youths!) get caught up in a freak storm while doing community service. They soon realize they’ve developed powers related to their personalities, as have other people in their chaotic, run-down neighborhood. They also have a habit of running afoul of people who use their powers for evil, including a guy who kills people with dairy products (it was a weird show). It ran for five seasons on E4, continuing even as every original Misfit pictured above departed the show for other jobs (most notably Iwan Rheon leaving to play Ramsay Bolton on Game Of Thrones).
Now Misfits is following in the footsteps of House Of Cards, Shameless, The Office, etc., by landing its own American remake. It’ll air on Freeform, which already has two other shows about superpowered kids (Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger and New Warriors). Diane Ruggiero-Wright of iZombie and Veronica Mars has been tapped as showrunner.
Four of the five lead actors have already been cast. According to Deadline, Ashleigh LaThrop (Sirens) will play Alicia, “a spoiled, vapid, middle-class party girl.” Tre Hall (Rebel) will play Curtis, “a talented and cocky football player with a promising career ahead of him who is used to everything going his way.” Allie MacDonald (Orphan Black) will play Kelly, who is “tough and trashy” with a violent temper. Jake Cannavale (Nurse Jackie) will play Nathan, an overconfident thief.
In other words, the characters have the same names and similar personalities to the original five UK Misfits, but they haven’t cast their Simon (Iwan Rheon) yet. Finding an actor who can play someone that creepy while remaining sympathetic is going to be a challenge. Hopefully they’ll find the right actor, and hopefully having Ruggiero-Wright as showrunner will mean the American version avoids the UK version’s issue of female villains who are one-dimensional, shrewish, and often defined by male rejection/attraction.
(Via Deadline)